This Time Around
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: Post-finale, Jane & Kurt wander back to each other.


_**A/N** : Just a drabble-y thing (that accidentally got really long). Completely unrelated to s2, this story picks up sometime after the s1 finale where Kurt arrests Jane. It moves forward on the premise that while in custody Jane told the Bureau the whole truth about what had been going on behind the scenes during the latter half of s1, and was eventually exonerated. Please enjoy. :)_

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He insisted on personally walking her home every day after work once she came back, just in case. Jane insisted it wasn't necessary, but all he had to do was look at her, and she remembered that night after the kiss, and the men from the van, and the water filling her lungs, and she knew _necessity_ was an argument she'd lose, and rightfully so. He said her escort home could either be him or it could be a four-person security detail and she, of course, chose him.

The walks were awkward at first, and mostly silent. He talked only to ask her which route she wanted to take home today (she switched between two almost equidistant paths), and she responded by leading the way. He fell into step beside her, and they lapsed back into silence until they said goodbye. It was nothing special, just a wave, a see you tomorrow, him waiting on the curb to make sure she locked her door before leaving.

It took a few weeks for them to get into a comfortable rhythm, but eventually, on a random chance, it happened. She realized one evening that she didn't know Sawyer's birthday, and so she asked him. It had not been some sort of ploy for camaraderie—it had been Sarah's birthday the day before, and celebrating that had made Jane realize she didn't know Sawyer's—but if it had been a ploy, she would've been hard-pressed to find a better one. She and Kurt hadn't talked about anything except cases in so long that she had forgotten how enthusiastic he could be about his nephew. The subject of Sawyer took them all the way from the steps of the Bureau to her front stoop, and even kept them lingering there for a few minutes.

When he realized he was keeping her from her dinner and her evening routine, he quickly excused himself. But he didn't get more than a few steps before she blurted the words she'd been wanting to say the whole way home.

"This was nice—talking again. You and me."

She cringed internally—and a bit externally—at that last bit, but he smiled.

"It was nice," he agreed. He paused a moment more, looking at her like maybe there was something else he wanted to say, and she hung there, waiting for it, but all he said in the end was another goodbye.

When she got to work the next day and sat down at her desk, there was a coffee already waiting for her.

They didn't speak much during that day, but every time he was near her, she felt hyperaware of his presence. Coffee was nothing, she told herself. They used to bring each other coffee all the time. Patterson sometimes still brought her a cup if she was going on a break to Starbucks. But it was different coming from him. Everything was different coming from him.

On the walk home that day, she found herself wondering if the little favor had been some sort of sign. Did he want to be her friend again? Could they even make that happen, after all they'd been through and all they'd done to each other?

When she found the courage to ask, he shrugged at the pointed questions, taking his time answering, apparently blind to the desperation beneath her words.

"I want us to be whatever it is we are," he answered finally, just as they hit her corner. "I want us to be who we're supposed to be, without all the awkwardness and the guilt and... whatever else has been between us."

She nodded silently. If he didn't want to put a name to the wedge between them, she wouldn't force him. But she couldn't help wondering, "What if we can't move past the awkwardness? What if... What if the guilt is a part of who we are now?"

He looked at her, taking in the worry in her green eyes, paying attention to the tight way she pressed her lips together when she was anxious, and he shook his head.

"I don't want it to be," he answered simply. Then he turned and walked back home. And that was that.

She stopped thinking so hard about her interactions with him after that day. When he looked at her, he looked at her; when he didn't, he didn't. Some days he left coffee for her, other days he didn't. Sometimes they talked the entire way home, other times they said nothing more than goodbye. For the first time in months, she let things move along naturally, and didn't fight for control or understanding. He didn't seem to stop and agonize over every word and every action and how it might be perceived by her, and so she didn't either. They fell back into being together—if not as friends, then at least as coworkers who looked out for each other.

"You look thin," he told her one day after he dropped her off, and then before she could say anything—What was she even supposed to say to that?—he added quickly, "I thought maybe I could make you dinner sometime."

She blinked, still trying to wrap her head around the first sentence while her mind was bombarded by the second. The answer came to her immediately, out of instinct. She looked at him standing there on the sidewalk and she knew at once that she didn't want him to go. Not now, and not in the foreseeable future.

"Dinner would be nice," she said.

The next day on the walk to her apartment, they stopped on the way to buy groceries: pasta, chicken, broccoli, olive oil, bread, a bottle of wine, and some other essentials. He refused to let her pay for anything, even though apparently she was the one that was going to be eating the majority of the food. To compensate, she went back and bought a second bottle of wine herself. He didn't say anything to that, but she caught a smile on his face before he turned away.

Though he tried to teach her how to cook the dish he was making, insisting again and again that it was incredibly simple, she hardly paid attention. She sat at the table as he moved around her little kitchen, and while he cut meat and boiled water for pasta and made the sauce, she sat and sipped at a glass of wine from one of the bottles they'd bought. He accused jokingly of being a lazy drunk, and she replied that he should leave his FBI career and become a housewife—he had all the right credentials, it seemed. He even cleaned up after the messes he made.

When the food was ready, she did finally help by setting the table: two of everything, tucked in one corner of the table. The food was delicious, and she told him so, but he batted away her praise as expected. _It's easy to make,_ he said again and again.

"Well, at some point, you'll have to come back and teach me," she replied. "I promise I'll pay attention next time."

He laughed at that, calling her bluff. "I don't think you'll ever pay attention. You'll just sit there like a bum and drink and then eat all my hard work."

"Well, come back and make it anyway," she smiled. "Even if I don't cook, I still like eating with you." The easy smile that had been on her face fell first from one side of her mouth, then the other. She looked down, staring into the dregs at the bottom of her wineglass. "It's been a long time since I've eaten dinner with someone," she whispered finally.

He did not say anything to that, did not ask, did not press, but when she looked up again and found him staring at her, she did not shy away from the obvious fact that he wanted to know. She sensed his curiosity burning through him, and when she offered to sate it, he did not pretend to shy away. He wanted to know and—he only realized this much later—she wanted to tell. She needed to do what he had never let himself do with Taylor, until he'd met her, which was unburden herself.

She had told the pertinent facts to the Bureau; she had discussed the haunting details in sessions with Borden. But she had never actually talked to any of her friends, not about him, and for a minute her head was overloaded with everything she wanted to say. She didn't know where to start. She didn't know what Kurt wanted to hear. In the end, she just took a breath and opened her mouth and said the first thing that came to mind.

"I still dream of him sometimes."

She tried to say more, knowing how vague that opening was, but she found the sudden confession had paralyzed her. She had never spoken about him to anyone but her psychiatrist.

Into the silence, Kurt prompted her quietly.

"Of killing him?"

She wanted to shake her head no, but she knew she couldn't lie. Besides, she and Borden had talked about this, and she'd allowed the Bureau access to all her psych files. Likely Kurt had already read all about this, and knew about the nightmares and the panic attacks and the guilt that followed her everywhere even though she knew there was nothing she could've done different.

"Yes," she whispered. "I dream of killing him."

"And other things, too?"

She drew in a breath, watching his eyes. She knew what he was asking after, they both did, and yet it still caught her off guard. She should have known better than to start this conversation—at some point, they were destined come to this break in the road, apparently sooner rather than later. She couldn't tell yet, though, if it was just a bump in the path forward or a fork in a new direction.

"Other things..." she repeated, stalling for time. Her mouth was starting to go dry.

"I can be specific if you want," he offered quietly.

"So can I, Kurt. I can be very specific."

They stared at each other for a long while, neither moving. She kept waiting—for him to get up, for him to go, for him to say this had all been a mistake and would always be a mistake. But he just sat there and looked at her and waited.

She wondered how many of her psych files he'd looked at, and what he had thought when he'd read the entries. She wondered how long he'd been fixated on them, holding himself back from asking these questions.

She blinked, shaking her head. It didn't matter.

"They're different now, the dreams," she said finally, lowering her eyes to the table. She stared at a knot in the wood, spoke to it, and let him listen. "When I used to dream of us together, it was so... so overwhelming, I almost couldn't breathe. I woke up sweating. I couldn't sleep for hours afterwards; I ended up pacing in the apartment during the night. The dreams were all I thought about during the day—I walked around work paranoid that someone would know, would read my mind."

"And now?"

She smiled briefly, glancing up to meet his eye. "Well, now I'm talking to you about it, so do I seem paranoid?"

He shrugged, apparently agreeable to whatever she might feel or not feel.

"They're different now," she repeated, her eyes falling to the table again as she found her original train of thought once more. "I mean, I know what it's like now, the real thing—with him, even—so the mystery and the... the suspension of disbelief, I guess, are gone. When I see him, I know that I am dreaming. There's no romanticism anymore; I know he's dead and I know I killed him and I know the part of him that meets me in my dreams is a fiction that I've created to... I don't know, to comfort myself. Distract myself." She shook her head. "God, I sound insane. You must think I'm insane."

"I don't think you're insane, Jane."

"You think this is normal? Look at me and tell me this is normal, Kurt."

"Jane, I'm just about the last person you should be asking to define what is and isn't normal."

"Well..." She traced patterns on the table for a few seconds. Then she sighed and sat back in her chair. She crossed her arms and looked at him and in a faux-exasperated voice, she asked, "What good are you to me then, Kurt?"

He cracked a smile at that, and she did, too, and they left it there for now. The solemnity was broken, and for a quarter of an hour while they cleaned up the kitchen and the table from dinner, they talked about less serious things, and even managed to laugh a little. They grew quiet again when she led him to the door. He paused a moment on the threshold, and turned to her.

"Look, I understand that what you're going through is confusing. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like, but I want you to know that it doesn't make you any less sane to me. You're just going through a rough bit. But you'll figure it out. You'll be okay."

She nodded, appreciating the sentiment even if it was grossly understated. It would be a miracle if she ended up "okay." But she supposed he didn't need to hear that right now. Even he had to be protected from some things. "Thanks, Kurt," she told him instead.

"And it helps, you know, that you were never very sane to begin with. You didn't really set the bar high, so there's not far to fall."

She rolled her eyes, and pushed him towards the door. "Get out of my home, would you?"

They had a standing date for dinners after that. On Thursdays, he came by and cooked for her, and they talked. On Fridays, he came by and she attempted to cook for him. Usually there was more yelling than talking on Fridays, because she tended to forget about the stove and burn things. But always, they found a few minutes, or sometimes a few hours, to discuss what they needed to discuss. He became her second therapist, in a way, and no matter how many times she told him she had Borden to talk about these things with, he always said he didn't mind listening if she wanted to talk.

She wasn't naïve; she knew what he was doing. She knew he was taking active steps to rebuild the trust that had cracked between them, and she appreciated it.

She also knew he was trying to build something else, too.

He went slow on that front, though. Whether because he was nervous of doing something wrong himself, or because he wanted to give her time to acclimate, she didn't know and didn't ask. She didn't care. Slow worked for her, this time around.

It was a couple months before they kissed again, and when it happened, it was as soft and tender as the first time had been. There wasn't that same innocence as before, but when he held her and she closed her eyes, she could almost feel the echo of it. It made her feel safe and untroubled, if only for a few seconds.

When he stepped back, she did not hold him to her. She did not ask him to stay. They said their goodbyes and she let him go, and the next day at work, when he came to walk her home, he held her hand the whole way there.

Gradually, they spent more and more time together. They went out to dinner at restaurants and saw movies and spent evenings at the bar with the team, but all of that was secondary, in her mind, to the evenings they spent in her apartment. They still made each other dinner on Thursdays and Fridays—she'd finally managed to master a couple dishes without setting off the fire alarm—and after more than a few offers, he started staying over some nights.

It was nothing, at first. One of their Thursday night talks ran incredibly late, and she convinced him to just sleep on the couch instead of heading all the way home. After some needling, he finally agreed to stay, and she couldn't remember a better Friday morning she'd spent than the one that followed. They had breakfast and coffee together, and though they didn't have time to linger over it because he had to get home to change before work, she still cherished those early few hours with him.

After another week, he began taking up residence at her place every Thursday night. It was pointless for him to head home late every Thursday night when he'd be at her house again Friday, they both reasoned, and soon they were spending one, then two, sometimes three, nights a week together. At her insistent worry for his back, he'd abandoned the couch and joined her in her bed.

They hadn't had sex yet—he had made absolutely no overtures towards it—and the more time they spent together, the more she wondered if he was scared for some reason. Did he expect something to go wrong? She didn't, and after a couple days, she made a point to tell him so. They were sitting at her kitchen table, long after they'd finished dinner. When she asked, he looked away, and when he answered, he didn't meet her eye.

"I'm not scared, Jane. I'm just being careful."

And then, because he couldn't hide it anymore, not when she was sitting in front of him asking for the truth, he confessed, "When we have sex—if—I want to be certain you know it's me with you. That's why I've waited."

She didn't know what to say to that at first. She just stared at his averted eyes, searching blindly for the words with which to reply. He couldn't take the silence, and soon added, "I'm not that heavy of a sleeper, you know. I hear you when you get up in the middle of the night. Pacing."

She felt like he'd stolen her breath.

"I don't dream like that anymore."

"Don't you?" he challenged quietly. His eyes were steady on hers. Not angry, not betrayed, just wanting to know.

"Are you accusing me of lying?"

"I'm accusing you of being kind to me."

"Ah. Well, we wouldn't want that now, would we?"

"Jane—"

"Kurt, you can believe me or you can not believe me. We've been down this road before. We know the destinations at either end. So pick one, and let's go."

He sighed, closing his eyes with a hard sigh. "I just don't want to lose you again. Okay? I don't want to rush things."

"What makes you think you're going to lose me?"

He shrugged, meeting her eyes tiredly. "Experience."

"So you're not giving me a second chance."

"Jane—"

"You're not giving me an opportunity to show you that I'm not going anywhere. You're just trusting that things are going to go wrong."

"Look at my track record, Jane. I mean—can you blame me?"

"I'm not blaming you. I'm asking you to trust me." She raised her eyebrows. "You do trust me, right? Or is that up in the air still, too?"

"I do, and know what? To continue to keep that trust, I'm going to do you a favor and pretend you didn't just ask me that."

A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. "Come on," she said. She got to her feet, and reached for his hand, and he watched warily as she pulled him to his feet as well. He braced himself to refuse to follow her to her bedroom, but she didn't head back into the apartment at all. Instead, she led him to the door and opened it, and stood to the side. Like she wanted him to leave.

He hung onto the doorframe, confused. "Wait, I don't understand what's happening here. Is this a punishment? Are you kicking me out because I won't sleep with you? Jane—"

"It's a lesson," she informed him. She pried his fingers off the doorframe one by one. "I'm not worried and you shouldn't be, either. So take some time if you have to." She moved to stand between him and the rest of the apartment, effectively forcing him out onto the stoop. "Come back when you trust me, and yourself. Or at least when you want to try."

He didn't argue, though for a second she actually thought he would. For a second, she thought he was going to give in, was going to wrap her in his arms and carry her to bed, but of course that didn't happen. He wasn't the type to act on such whims. All he did was nod, say goodnight, and then go on his way. She was still standing in the doorway watching him when he looked back at the corner, and she waved. She hoped he wouldn't take too long to get his head on straight.

It took three days, as it turned out. They saw each other at work, and he walked her home as usual, but he didn't stay. For the first time in months, she made dinner only for herself on Thursday and Friday. When he said goodbye to her at her door each night, it was with a kiss, but never anything more. They certainly weren't moving forward—and she tried her best to hope they weren't moving backward.

When he came by her apartment unannounced on Saturday morning and knocked on her door, her first instinct was to turn him away. It was eight AM, she was still in her pajamas, she had stayed up the previous night doing extra work for the Bureau, and the last thing she wanted to do was put on clothes and go walk out into the world. But he said he wanted to talk, and she remembered all those months that she'd talked and he'd listened, and she supposed she could give him this.

He didn't speak right away, and apart from yawning every couple minutes, she didn't press him to hurry up. They wandered uptown, towards Central Park, and slipped through the south entrance behind a gaggle of toddlers being shepherded by their daycare providers. For a while, they sat at a bench beside the playground, watching the kids scream and play and run around. Then his quiet voice cut through the clamor of the morning.

"Will you tell me what wakes you up at night?"

She blinked, a little taken aback by the sudden question. She was going to ask him where it had come from, but then she remembered their last conversation in her kitchen. _I hear you when you get up in the middle of the night._ He didn't meet her eye; he kept his gaze fixed on the kids frolicking before them, but she knew he was waiting for an answer nonetheless.

"I don't always know what it is," she confessed finally. She kept her eyes on the children, too, finding it easier to talk about this with the distraction of their carefree happiness. "The things I dream about... Sometimes they're concrete. Sometimes I remember them when I wake up: things that happened in the field, or memories, or nightmares I've had before. But most of the time I don't remember what it is I've dreamed of, and all I wake up remembering is being terrified—of something I can't name and something I can't see. I can't lie still afterwards, so I get up."

"You don't talk to me about it."

"You have your own demons," she excused.

"That doesn't mean I don't want to help you with yours."

She nodded to that, but didn't say anything more. No matter how much they had talked together, there were still certain parts of herself she needed to keep her own. Certain things she needed to protect him from, if only to protect herself.

"You've been volunteering to do more desk work," he noted after a moment, certain details falling into place for him.

Throat closing, she nodded jerkily. She supposed they would always end up here. At some point, he would figure it out. She took a breath.

"Being out in the field... I can do it, Kurt. I'm capable, I am. But sometimes..." She closed her eyes. When he saw her start to shake, he grabbed onto her hand, and folded it between two of his. "The things I see out there, they stick with me more now. I don't know if it's because of him or what I did or just the fact I know more about what's going on now. But I can't brush off things the way I used to be able to. I can't go around shooting people and not having it affect me, even if I know I did it for the right reasons and had no other choice."

"Do you see him every time you kill someone?"

The reality had been in her head so long the question didn't shock her. "Not always. Sometimes yes, but…" She closed her eyes. She squeezed his hand a little tighter. "To tell you the truth, I... I'm having trouble remembering exactly what he looked like. So no, I don't really see him every time. I guess I imagine him."

Kurt looked down. "I'm sorry, Jane," he said quietly.

She shook her head, slipping her hand out from between his. "It isn't something you need to concern yourself with."

"If it's something that upsets you, I will be concerned." He looked up at met her eye. "We have documents, you know. Pictures, records... If there's something you want to remember. You're allowed access to his file, you know."

She shook her head. "It's better this way, I think. To let it... Let him fade. What would pictures do? Just remind me of all the mistakes I made, all the things I lost." She glanced over at him. "You don't hang onto pictures of Taylor, do you?"

"Taylor's different."

"Why?"

"You know why."

She stared out at the children, shaking her head. She watched as the day-care providers gathered them up and took them on their next adventure of the day. Each child held onto a rung on one long blue rope, with watchful eyes at the front, middle, and back of the line so no one ducked out of sight and got lost. It was a few minutes before Jane spoke again. Their area of the park was much quieter by then.

"It wasn't like that, you know. It's not like I saw him again and we were immediately in love. That's not how it worked, Kurt."

"I'm not presuming to know how it worked."

"I don't even think that's how he saw it," she continued. "I mean, those first few weeks… We weren't close, Kurt. Not at all. He called, I showed up, we talked, we argued, that was it. For _weeks_. He showed no indication that he wanted anything else. For a while, I didn't even think he liked me—the new me."

"So what changed?"

"God, I don't know. He got tired of pretending, maybe. He hit his breaking point—well, we both did, I guess. I think we both got sick of putting up this veneer of professionalism, like we didn't know each other or didn't want to know each other." She glanced over at him with a sad smile. "You know a bit about what that's like, right?"

Kurt nodded his head.

"I wasn't in love with him. We didn't have time for that, or the freedom for it. If our lives had in any way been normal, maybe that would've been different. If we hadn't had this mess around us to wade through, if we'd actually had time to learn about one another…" She sighed, looking back out at the park. The children were gone now, and it was hard to find something else to focus on. None of the trees or animals or passersby held her attention. She could feel Kurt next to her, waiting. "Maybe things would've been different," she said finally. "But they weren't. They aren't."

He didn't ask if she regretted that. He didn't ask if she wanted things to be different. He just watched her for a moment, giving her time. He knew better than most how the past lingered even after you'd watched it disappear.

After a minute, he cleared his throat and he wondered, "Well… What now?"

She cracked a smile at the question, actually laughing a little as she looked over at him. "No idea. What are our options this Saturday?"

He smiled at the easy transition back into normalcy, and the effortless way she'd paired the two of them together, and then he checked his watch. "Well… It's about a quarter to noon. We could go get lunch somewhere. Or—I know I got you up early. I could walk you back home, if you want."

She smiled at the offer, grateful for it and all it signified. She reached for his hand again. "Maybe later," she suggested quietly. She shifted towards him on the bench, letting their knees, hips, and arms line up. Then she leaned over until her head rested on his shoulder. "For now, I'd just like to sit here with you a while longer. "If that's okay."

"It's definitely okay."


End file.
